GETTING HERE FROM THERE: The fall of the Kamloops Blazers
When this WHL season draws to a close, it will have been 13 years since the Kamloops Blazers won their last Memorial Cup.That championship, the franchise’s third in four years, was won in the spring of 1995, and it was won right in Kamloops, which played host to that year’s Memorial Cup tournament.
While the Blazers were the host team, they did not back into that championship. They won a WHL-leading 52 games that regular season, then went on to capture the playoff title, taking out the Brandon Wheat Kings in six games in the final series.
That Memorial Cup all but signaled the end of the Blazers’ run as the most dominant team in the Canadian Hockey League. Starting in 1989-90, they won 56, 50, 51, 42, 50 and 52 games. They finished with the WHL’s best record five times in six seasons. And, as mentioned, they won three Memorial Cups in four seasons.
Two weeks after the Blazers won the 1995 Memorial Cup, team president Colin Day and lawyer Barry Carter walked into the office of general manager Bob Brown and fired him. Brown had been the general manager through all of the run. He was the dynasty’s architect. Still, Day said, it was time to go in a different direction.
Since then, the Blazers have won four playoff series – two each in the spring of 1996 and 1999. Nine times they have been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. Since the spring of 1999, when they reached the WHL championship final and lost to the Calgary Hitmen in five games, they have lost out in the first round on seven occasions. In the spring of 2006, they suffered the ignominy of not making the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
So how did it happen? How did this once-proud franchise get to where it is today?
Over the next eight weeks, you’ll find out right here at gdrinnan.blogspot.com.
Watch for GETTING HERE FROM THERE: The fall of the Kamloops Blazers.
It starts Monday, Dec. 31, with Chapter 1: Setting Off in a New Direction.
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